Pope senior NCO receives Bronze Star Published Dec. 13, 2007 By 2nd Lt. Chris Hoyler 43rd Airlift Wing Public Affairs POPE AIR FORCE BASE, N.C. -- Senior Master Sgt. Sean Wong, 2nd Airlift Squadron loadmaster superintendent here, was awarded the Bronze Star medal Dec. 7 for his work in training the Iraqi air force on the C-130 aircraft during OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. Sergeant Wong received the Bronze Star for exceptionally meritorious achievement as a combat aviation advisor and C-130E standardization and evaluation loadmaster. "It's special to have a living, breathing example of the warrior spirit in our squadron," Lt. Col. Walter Ward, 2nd AS commander, said. "You can talk about service before self, but there is a difference between telling and showing, and Sean is an example of this." Sergeant Wang told his story to Pope's leadership and his fellow 2nd AS members, relaying his experiences from the beginning of training at Hurlburt Field, Fla. to the completion of the mission, which yielded a 27 percent increase in Iraqi loadmasters. He said there were a lot of unknowns going into the beginning of training, and that even though the majority of the 45 Iraqis in the operations squadron had varying degrees of training under their belt, they still leaned on the U.S. instructors for help too much. "Our focus was kind of tough love," Sergeant Wong said. "That was our theme throughout the year. "They needed to know that we were there at the time, but we were not always going to be there. We stood our ground and leadership supported us." The training process led to the Iraqi air force's 23rd Squadron flying more than 700 combat sorties and logging 912 mishap-free hours. In that time, they carried 8,160 passengers and 480,000 pounds of cargo. The results also yielded diplomatic success, as the unit launched flights inside of Iraq and to surrounding countries with key dignitaries to include the Iraqi President, Vice President and Prime Minister. "We took what would be an Air Force base, on a smaller scale, and led it on a mission," Sergeant Wong said. He said personnel of the 23rd Squadron were very different from a typical U.S. Air Force unit and there were many barriers beyond the obvious cultural and language differences. One of those barriers was training both officer and enlisted personnel for similar jobs. "We had to show them that our goal was to teach, regardless of rank," Sergeant Wong said. Another was trying to be a leader through personal issues unfamiliar to the U.S. Armed Forces culture, such as one of the Iraqi soldiers having two wives. "Sometimes it got interesting," Sergeant Wong said. The makeup of the unit was interesting as well. The oldest Iraqi loadmaster was 57, an Iraq-Iran War veteran and a grandfather of three. But despite the differences of the trainers and trainees, Sergeant Wong said, the U.S. soldiers were treated "like family" the entire time. "There was a bond there," he said. That bond was essential to completing the training mission, and Sgt. Wong had a big part in that not only as a flight instructor, but also in building and executing a squadron performance report and tracking system. Coalition forces also qualified an Iraqi instructor and an evaluator for the C-130. "The evaluator was important, because before that only U.S. soldiers were evaluating," he said. Sergeant Wong completed his speech with a video documenting the deployment, a presentation that showed just how close the trainers and trainees became. "I gained a lot of friendships out of it," Sergeant Wong said. "It was very rewarding."